45 Caliber Soul
by PJ's Daddy
Summary: An American officer serving in Afghanistan finds himself transported back in time, where he meets members of the Soul Calibur gang. This story was originally written for my son P.J., who is a Soul Calibur fanatic. Update to author's notes 1204.
1. Chapter 1

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 1 – "I've a feeling we're not in Afghanistan any more." 

"Beamer Six, this is Beamer Three-Six . . . we got a truck comin' up the draw. . . . two men in the cab, four in the back, looks like a twelve-point-seven or a fourteen-five mounted on top the cab. Betcha that's our boy."

We were in the middle of the Panjashir Valley of Afghanistan, two hundred miles from the nearest place with running water and electricity. We'd been hiking for two days through bandit country to get here. My C.P. was up on the hillside overlooking an isolated farmhouse. I could see through my night vision goggles that there were five or six guys in turbans hanging around the farm, waiting for somebody. That somebody, whoever he was—the guys from the Other Government Agency (a polite term for "CIA") that I was escorting here in bandit country wouldn't tell me much, just that he was a High Value Target—was probably a passenger in that truck that Corporal Taylor just reported.

My job was to take custody of Mr. HVT, in as undamaged a condition as possible, so the OGA guys could have a long conversation with him. To accomplish this, I had the Third Platoon, Company C, First Battalion, Ninety-Third Volunteer Infantry, United States Army, with attached assets, namely a sniper team with a Barrett fifty and one USAF Enlisted Forward Air Controller. The wing-wiper was a shrimpy, mousy little guy, but he had a GPS, a laser rangefinder, and a radio, and out here that made him the Hindu god Shiva, the Bringer of Death and Destroyer of Worlds. On about five minutes' notice, he could call in a two thousand pounder JDAM or an AC-130 gunship or a Warthog on anything he could see—and make it go away.

If he had to do that, it probably would mean we were in trouble.

Corporal Purcell's squad was on the hill just below me, covering the farmhouse with all three SAWs. Sergeant Wheeler, my platoon sergeant, and the second squad were close in, and one of the grenadiers had his GL loaded with flash-bangs. Third squad, Corporal Taylor, was watching the road. The fifty, the OGAs, and the wing-wiper were right next to me.

The plan, as plans go, was pretty simple. Once the truck passed, Taylor's people would move down into a blocking position across the road. We'd wait for the HVT to get in the house, then Wheeler's grenadier would put a flash-bang in the window. Wheeler would assault the house, covered by Purcell, while Taylor would sweep up the road in case anyone tried to escape.

The truck pulled up to the farmhouse. "Six, this is Three-Six," my earphone whispered, "in position." That meant Taylor was ready.

I took another look at the farm through the NVGs. The guys from the truck were going in, save for one who stayed outside on the big gun. Four other turbans were just standing around, providing what I guess they considered local security. They didn't have a clue we were there.

"Six to One-Six," I said into the radio. "Go, no-go?"

I heard a single beep from Sergeant Wheeler's signal key. He was ready.

I set my NVGs down. "Your target's the truck. Take the gunner first," I whispered to the sniper.

"Yessir."

I keyed the mic. "Let's roll!"

There was a single, soft popping noise from down in the valley—Wheeler's grenade launcher—and a sound of breaking glass. The interior of the farmhouse lit up like a flashbulb. The Barrett fifty went off with a loud report. Purcell's SAW gunners fired a series of short bursts, spraying tracers into the night.

I put the NVGs back up to my face and looked toward the farmhouse. The gunner on the back of the truck was slumped over the tailgate. Only one turban was still standing, blasting away with his AK in random directions. The truck suddenly backed away and shot off down the road in panic. I heard the sniper curse—he must have shot at the driver and missed. The last turban flopped over, probably a victim of M-16 fire from Wheeler's squad. I saw three of our guys race up to the farmhouse door and do a "ballistic breach" of the door with a shotgun.

There was a burst of fire from up the road. The truck had run into Taylor's ambush. I looked up that way through the NVGs—the truck was stopped, off to one side of the road.

I looked back toward the farmhouse. Wheeler was inside by now. I could hear indistinct shouts, but no shooting. "Six, this is One-Six," my radio said. "Objective secure. We got the big boy."

"Cease fire," I replied. "One-Six hold the prisoners 'till I get there; Two-Six and Three-Six, redeploy for local security and mark out an LZ for the extraction bird; well done people." I put down the mic. "You fall in with Purcell," I said to the sniper, then turned to the FAC. "Call the taxi," I told him, referring to the transport helicopter waiting to pick up the OGAs and the HVT. "Now let's go on down," I said to the nearest OGA, "and say hello to your new friend."

When I got to the farmhouse, Wheeler met me at the door. He was a tall kid from the rough part of Detroit, young for a sergeant, but very good at the job. "El-tee!" he said when I got close enough for conversation, "we've got six enemy kilo, nine EPWs, two of 'em wounded—Doc's workin' on 'em now—and no friendly casualties."

"You're having a good day at the office," I replied. That might seem a funny thing to say, in response to a report that six people had just died by violence, but that's how you think out in the boonies. You want it so that everybody on your side has fun, and nobody gets hurt. The other team, they're _supposed_ to be casualties. It's like old General Patton said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win by making the other guy die for his.

I stepped inside. The farmhouse was pretty basic, mud-brick walls, crude wooden furniture, a couple of kerosene lanterns for lighting. The prisoners were lined up on one wall, their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zip-cuffs, and one of Wheeler's squad standing over them with a pistol just in case they got any ideas. The rest of Wheeler's squad was carefully searching the farmhouse.

The OGA guys made for the oldest prisoner and started talking to him in Arabic—not Pashtun or Turkoman or one of the other local dialects, but Arabic, with a Saudi accent. He was definitely a major bad guy.

"Hey, El-tee, we found a spider hole in the back." It was Rawlins, one of the guys in Wheeler's squad, standing in the doorway to the back room.

I followed him into the back bedroom. They'd found a trap door under the bed; beneath it was a shaft about eight feet deep. One guy had already gone down in there; I could see a flashlight dancing in the darkness.

I hunched down over the hole. "What'cha got down there?"

Private Ruiz looked up at me from the bottom of the hole. "Oh, hi, El-tee. You oughtta come down here an' see for yerself. It's a regular jee-haddi warehouse."

"Okay, comin' down." I set my M-16 on the floor next to the hole and lowered myself in. There was a ladder of sorts along one side of the shaft.

At the bottom of the shaft, it opened out into a chamber about four feet high, filled with crates and boxes. "Lookie here, El-tee," Ruiz said. He crouched and went in between two crates, pointing things out with his flashlight. "This place's a regular Taliban party supply store. We got seven point six two ammo over here . . . RPGs over here . . . some Bouncin' Betty mines . . ."

I swung my own flashlight into another part of the chamber. I caught a glint of something red and metallic between two crates. For some reason, it caught my curiosity, and I crawled over to it.

". . . one-twenty mortar rounds . . . a whole one-twenty mortar broke down into pack loads . . ."

Whatever it was, it practically glowed when the flashlight hit it. It was the most mesmerizing shade of red I'd ever seen. "Hey, El-tee, what'cha got over there?"

"I don't know." I reached in to touch it—

—and suddenly I wasn't in Afghanistan any more.

It was the middle of an overcast day. I was standing in the sanctuary of a ruined Gothic cathedral. Most of one wall and the roof were missing; to judge from the broken stonework and debris, and the holes in some of the surviving stained glass, it looked like it had been bombarded. I turned around slowly, surveying the scene.

I wasn't alone. About fifteen feet away from me was a short, powerfully-built man—in lacquered Japanese samurai armor, with a big long Japanese samurai sword.

He didn't look happy.

In fact, he looked like he was about to use that sword of his on me.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	2. Chapter 2

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 2 – Samurai 

The Army tries to prepare you for everything, but nothing I'd studied in ROTC or Basic or Command School had taught me how to face an angry Japanese samurai in single combat in a ruined European church.

The samurai was less than ten feet away. He had his sword at the ready. I had no doubt he was fast, and if he came for me I'd be within the arc of his sword in no more than a couple of seconds. My M-16 was back in Afghanistan, where I'd set it when I crawled down the spider hole, so if he started to move toward me, all I had to defend myself with was my trusty old .45 Model 1911A1, in its holster behind my back, and a utility knife. Against that armor of his, the knife would be a joke. If I evaded him and drew the .45, and aimed quick enough before he got another stroke in and _if_ the .45 punched through his armor, I might get out of it alive. Maybe.

If it came to that. I knew that we weren't supposed to be fighting. Don't ask me how I knew, I just knew.

I held my hands out so he could see they were empty. "I'm not your enemy!" I said. I couldn't speak Japanese, but maybe the combination of gesture and tone would get the point across.

"What is this place? Where is this?" he shot back, his voice a combination of fear and defiance, in perfect English. I didn't really find that surprising; I guess I was relieved that he and I could at least talk to each other.

"I'm not sure either."

"You did not bring me here?"

"No. How did you get here?"

He relaxed his stance, lowered the tip of his sword. "I was in battle, in a village. I entered a house . . . I saw—"

"Something red and shiny," I blurted.

"Yes, like a blood-red jewel. I reached for it and—"

"Suddenly, you're here." He nodded. "Me, too, and no, I can't explain it either."

He shook his blade, then sheathed it with a single smooth motion. His expression was much calmer. "You are right. We are not enemies." He took a step forward and bowed. "I am Heishiro Mitsurugi, a captain of Lord Yabu's retainers."

I returned the bow, careful to bend as far over as he had. "I am Seamus Patrick O'Malley," I said. I almost gave my full rank and MOS, but I decided it would be too complex to explain. "I'm a lieutenant in . . . Lord Rumsfeld's retainers."

"Lord Rumsfeld? I do not know of him."

"I've never heard of Yabu, either. I have a feeling that my home and yours are a long way apart."

"But yet you speak my language!"

"I'm speaking Japanese?" He nodded. "Well, to me, it sounds like you're speaking . . . my language."

He looked up at one of the undamaged stained glass windows. "Perhaps we have been given the gift of tongues."

I nodded. "It would make sense. If we're supposed to cooperate, we have to be able to communicate." I started looking around. One end of the church was partially collapsed, and through the holes in the wall, you could see the buildings of a nearby town. I walked over to get a better look.

The architecture was definitely European, late middle ages or Renaissance period: two-story half-timbered rowhouses. It looked like there might have been a medieval wall around the town at one time, but the town had grown a few blocks outside its perimeter. That made it post-middle ages, at least. Some of the buildings I could see were damaged, and a couple burned out. There was debris in the streets, maybe even bodies, I couldn't tell at that distance, but no movement.

There was no sound. No cannons or gunshots; no horses or marching feet; no sounds of life or commerce. It was cool enough, high forties or low fifties, that people should be building fires for warmth, but there was no smoke coming from any of the chimneys. "The town looks abandoned," I said, partially to inform Mitsurugi and partially to break the silence.

"The Blessed Sacrament is gone!" he said, almost shouting. I turned my head to look. Mitsurugi was standing before the altar, staring at the tabernacle.

I trotted over to him. The altar was the old fashioned kind that faced away from the pews—which fit in with the time period of the local architecture. The tabernacle was open, and empty, except for the dust and little pieces of stonework that had fallen inside. There was debris all over the altar, but no altar cloths, no candles, no chalice. "Looks like everything was removed before the attack," I said. "They must have had some warning."

"Yes," Mitsurugi said. He took a deep breath. "It is sad to see a church destroyed. Perhaps it can be rebuilt and reconsecrated."

"Hold it," I said, realizing something. "Mitsurugi, you mind if I ask you something personal?"

"What do you wish to ask?"

"Are you Catholic?" It seemed a silly question.

"Yes."

"Oh. Me, too."

He sort of half-smiled. "I was baptized three years ago. If Lord Yabu were to learn of it, my life would be forfeit." I half-remembered something from my old _Lives of the Saints_ book about the Martyrs of Nagasaki from the year 1600-and-something. Imperial Japan wasn't big on freedom of religion back then, and they used Christians for sword-practice. To live in a place like that and keep your faith . . . this Mitsurugi was one tough dude.

So here I was, doing a battle-damage assessment on a ruined Renaissance church with a Catholic Samurai. I didn't think my day could get any weirder.

It did.

There was a . . . I don't know what to call it. A sound, but not really a sound, more like . . . oh, heck with it. I can't describe it. You had to be there.

About five or six feet away from Mitsurugi, where no one had been before, there was a petite teenage girl. She had black hair and dusky skin, and she was dressed in light clothing. She had what looked like a long knife, or maybe it's a short sword, in each hand, and she was probably as disoriented as Mitsurugi and I had been a few minutes ago.

Mitsurugi held his hands out to show that he had no weapons. "You do not need to fear," he said, firmly but nonthreateningly. "We will not harm you."

She held her stance for a second to two, then relaxed. She put her weapons in their sheaths with a smooth motion; she, too, was a trained martial artist.

Mitsurugi looked at me. I was about to say something along the lines of "hello" when Mitsurugi's eyes went wide. He started going for his sword. I spun around instinctively, reaching for the .45.

There was a big blond man charging at me. His clothing looked European. He had a big four-foot rapier in his left hand. He'd just started a forehand swing, and his blade was on course for my neck. There was no way I was going to evade it. He had me.

_. . . to be continued . . ._

Yeah, yeah, I know, the official issue pistol of the United States Army is the Beretta M92 automatic, caliber 9mm. But, like a lot of officers assigned to the back country, I had acquired a non-standard-issue Colt M1911A1, caliber .45 ACP, just like Grandpa might've used in WW2. I had my issue M92, too, and I kept it tucked safely into my footlocker back at base so I wouldn't lose it. Most of us never took the M92 with us on a mission. The 9mm round just doesn't have the stopping power of the old .45. If some crazed turban is coming after you with a knife at close quarters, do you want to tickle him with a nine, or smack him down with a real gun?


	3. Chapter 3

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 3 – Blue Silk and Bad Attitude 

I was a second or two away from being beheaded when this blur of light blue silk came out of nowhere and engaged the guy who was coming at me. She—it was a lady, whoever it was—blocked his sword stroke with her own sword, deflecting it down. He disengaged his blade and swung around for another stroke at her, but before he could do anything more, she hit him in the chest with a flying kick. He flew backwards into the communion rail; his sword clattered across the stone floor.

Before anyone else could react, she leaped toward him, her sword coming down in a killing stroke—which stopped abruptly a couple inches from his left ear. The teenager gasped. The girl in the blue silk held her sword there above blond guy's face a second or two, then backed away and sheathed it. "Just kidding," she giggled.

"Swords are not toys," Mitsurugi muttered in disapproval.

I had the .45 out by this time, but I wasn't going to need it. The blond guy was no longer in a fighting mood. Fact is, he looked downright embarrassed. I reholstered the gun and walked up to the lady in blue silk. "Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome," she said. She was Asian, a little shorter than me, and drop-dead pretty. "Next time, pay attention to what's behind you," she added, half-teasingly.

"I'll do that," I said. She had deep green eyes. You could go swimming in those eyes they were so deep. It took a lot of effort, but I came up for air and turned my attention to the blond guy. "Nice to meet you, too," I said, with as much attitude as I could muster. "I'm Seamus O'Malley."

"Raphael Sorel," he said wearily.

"And this lovely lady," I continued, going for an air of playful nonchalance, "is my new best friend, ah . . . I'm sorry, I don't believe we've been introduced."

"Chen Xanghua," she said, giving me an insolent little bow and a smile that had trouble written all over it. She was pretty, she was handy with a sword, and she had an attitude. How could you not like a girl like that?

The five of us spent about a half hour or so exchanging stories, uninterrupted by more sudden entrances or attempted beheadings. My companions were, as they say, a diverse lot. The lovely Xanghua was from Imperial China, one of the dynasties before the colonial period. She was the daughter of a nobleman, and a trained martial artist. She didn't have bound feet, though I'm not sure what that indicated. Did I mention that she was pretty, too?

Raphael was from France, after the Revolution but before Napoleon. He had a roguish manner about him, and could more than match Xanghua in the attitude department. He claimed to be a nobleman, or at least a wannabee nobleman, who'd been chased out of house and home by the revolutionaries and was living on the run—but then again, maybe he was on the run because he was one of those people who's always involved in something on the ragged edge of illegal. It could have been either, or both. He mentioned an adopted daughter, and if he cared for anything beyond his own survival and enrichment, it was that little girl.

The teenage girl was named Talim, and she was thirteen or fourteen. Like most girls that age, she was self-conscious and uncertain of herself. Those two short swords she carried had dual handles, one in the usual place, and one at a right angle to the blade, and like I said before, she handled them like she knew what she was doing. As best I could figure she was from the Philippines or New Guinea or Borneo or somewhere, and Raphael and I were the first white people she'd ever seen.

I've already told you about Mitsurugi, the Catholic samurai. One serious dude. You couldn't help but respect him, and even start to like him, even though he wasn't the friendliest sort.

"So, where is this place?" Talim asked. The question was directed at me. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, it seemed that the other four had elected me leader of the group. I didn't consciously try to assert control over the group. Maybe I did it without realizing because I'm an officer and I come off like I'm used to being in charge. Maybe they were deferring to me because my equipment was more technologically advanced and, being from a time after theirs, I had an advantage in knowledge. Maybe it was just my natural charm and good looks—yeah, right! Whatever the reason, I found myself serving as acting squad leader and all-round answer man.

"We're in Europe someplace," I said. She frowned. "I know that doesn't tell you a whole lot. Europe is . . . the part of the world that Raphael is from, and where my ancestors are from. If I had to guess more precisely, I would say we're in Germany." She sort of half-smiled; I guess it was a good enough description. "There's obviously some sort of conflict in progress, but the main fighting is somewhere else, at least for now. None of us are from this time and place, and the only thing we all have in common is that we're trained in some sort of combat skill. I think we all agree we're not supposed to be fighting each other"—Xanghua gave Raphael a look that was half admonishment, half teasing—"so I can only assume we're here to work together."

"But for what purpose?" Mitsurugi asked.

"I suspect it's something to do with that town over there," I replied. "Even if it isn't, it's probably a good idea to go over that way and look around." I glanced up at the overcast. "Plus, if the weather turns bad, we might want to be someplace a little more sheltered than this." I looked down at Talim. "We ought to find you some warmer clothing while we're at it; you're a little under-dressed for this climate." I paused for a moment; I really didn't want to be making all the decisions for everyone. "That is, unless you guys want to do something else."

"No," Xanghua said, "we should go into the town."

"Well, then," Raphael said, rising to his feet and extending a hand to Talim. "Let the dance begin."

There was a wide path from the church to the town; about halfway across the field between them, the path crossed a shallow stream on a rough wooden bridge. We were nearly to the bridge when we saw the first body.

The guy was laying halfway under the bridge, and to judge from the condition of the body—I've gained some experience in judging these things after two years in Afghanistan—he'd been dead for two or three days. He was dressed in crude, military-style clothing. There were blackish bloodstains on his shirt and trousers. It looked as though he'd crawled under there after being shot.

Did he die alone, or did someone stay with him to the end? Was he one of the defenders? Or one of the attackers? Had he crawled in here to hide after his compatriots retreated? Or were his buddies so busy looting the town they'd forgotten to come back for him? For that matter, if we found ourselves between the two contending armies, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? I had no way of knowing.

"May his soul find peace," Mitsurugi said quietly.

"Poor devil," Raphael muttered.

Mitsrugi climbed down the stream bank to get a better look. He picked up a long gun that was laying in the weeds nearby. "It is a musket," he declared, "but I do not know its kind."

He handed it up to me. It was heavy, with a huge bore, bigger than a fifty-cal. Instead of the usual flintlock, it had a small steel disc with a flint held against it. "An old wheel-lock," Raphael said.

"Define 'old,'" I asked him.

"Muskets like that have not been made in almost a hundred years," he answered, "ah, . . . at least where I come from, that is."

The French Revolution was 1789 . . . minus a hundred and a bit more for a fudge factor . . . made it the seventeenth century, sixteen-hundred-and-something, local time.

"How can it work without a match?" Mitsurugi asked.

"When you pull the trigger," Raphael explains, "a clockwork spins the wheel, which strikes sparks off a piece of flint, and that ignites your powder charge."

"You know how to handle one of these?" I asked him. He nodded. "Good, we could use the firepower." I handed it to him. "You're hired." I looked down at Mitsurugi. "See if you can find some powder and shot."

Talim was looking at us, a worried expression on her face. Raphael noticed it too. "Well," he said, "it's not as though that poor fellow will be using it any longer."

We found the dead guy's ammunition pouch, Mitsurugi climbed back up, and we started across the bridge. Talim was still acting like she had the creeping willies. I suppose that if I'd been fourteen or fifteen or sixteen and come across something like that for the first time, I'd be a little rattled, too. After a few days up in the mountains of Afghanistan, it's amazing how fast you get used to seeing some pretty ugly things. They still bother you, but you learn not to let the fact that it bothers you bother you. Sounds crazy, I know, but that's life in the back country.

"Talim, come on," Xanghua said, trying to sound reassuring.

Talim pointed off in the distance. "Something is coming."

"I don't see anything," Raphael said.

"No, wait," Mitsurugi said quietly. "Horses."

I heard it, too. The sound of horses moving at a good clip. Lots of them. Coming our way.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	4. Chapter 4

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 4 – War Zone 

I didn't want to be caught out in the open. Between Xianghua's bright blue silk and Mitsurugi's black lacquered armor and Talim's light clothing, we were too high-signature and too out of place not to be noticed. I was the only one in a proper camo pattern, but even my outfit was the wrong style and color. If they saw us, they'd be curious. There was no guarantee they weren't hostiles, and there was no way the five of us were going to be able to stand our ground in an open field against a significant number of mounted troops.

"Everybody down!" I shouted. "Hide under the bridge."

Nobody argued. We huddled in the streambed. Raphael frantically loaded the musket. The horses got closer . . . and closer . . . and then the sound wasn't getting any louder anymore.

I carefully poked my head up. A group of about seventy men on horseback was passing between us and the town, following a road I hadn't quite realized was there. As I watched, they slowed from a trot to a walk. I expected them to stop, but they kept going, eventually disappearing over a rise in the middle distance.

"I think it's safe now," I said. We got up out of the streambed and resumed our walk into the town. I still kept watching the ridge line, waiting for some of the horse guys to come back, but nothing appeared. "When they slowed down like that," I said to no one in particular, "I thought for sure they were going to stop."

"Merely changing pace, I should think," said Raphael.

"Yeah, but why would they do that?"

There was no answer. I looked at my companions. Raphael and Mitsurugi were staring at me like I had just said something abysmally stupid. "What?"

"You talk as though you know nothing of horses," Mitsurugi said.

"I don't have a lot of experience with them," I said. I knew that horses were big four-legged animals that ate oats and ran in the Kentucky Derby. I might have been on a pony ride once when Grandpa took me to the State Fair—but that was about it. I'd actually seen some Afghan friendlies and our own Special Forces guys coming back from mounted patrols once or twice, and I'd heard they'd executed a mounted charge up at Mazar-i-Sharif back in '01, but I wasn't in on any of those operations.

"Do you even know how to ride a horse?"

"Well, ah, actually . . . no."

"You're an officer in an army," Raphael said, "and yet you do not ride a horse?"

"No," I answered.

There was a long silence. "I find that utterly unbelievable," Raphael finally said.

Xianghua giggled. "He is a prince and has bearers to carry him in a great sedan chair." She winked at Talim. "Can you not see that from the finery of his clothing?" Even Talim cracked a smile at that. My desert-pattern BDUs were muddy and grubby and anything but princely.

"Well," said Raphael haughtily, "as everyone _else_ here certainly knows, if you are riding a horse for a long distance, you vary his pace every league or two so as not to wear him out too quickly."

"Oh," I said, embarrassed. Here I was, feeling superior to the rest of them because I came from the most advanced time and place—yet there were things they knew that I did not.

"Well," said Xianghua, "perhaps, in the town, we can find you a pony and teach you to ride." At that, even Raphael and Mitsurugi laughed.

They continued to tease me about my horse ignorance until we got within about fifty yards of the closest house. The town had been well and truly sacked. On the buildings that weren't damaged or burned out, windows were broken, doors and shutters were hanging loose or broken in. There were piles of cloth and broken furniture in the street. Some of those piles might have been bodies—we didn't look too closely at them.

The third or fourth building we came to had been a cobbler's shop. The place had been ransacked pretty thoroughly, but there were some high shoes that looked to have been made for a large kid or a small adult. Raphael wanted to check out what looked like a bakery across the street; while he did that, the other four of us went into the cobbler's shop.

Talim was suffering along with light moccasin-like slippers that weren't really suitable for the terrain, so I took the liberty of finding her a pair of high-top shoes that came close to fitting. While I was doing that, Xianghua and Mitsurugi disappeared upstairs into what must have been the cobbler's living quarters. When they came back downstairs, Xianghua had exchanged her bright blue silk for a black overcoat and trousers. It was a man's or boy's outfit, a little big on her, and she looked like a little girl dressed up as a Pilgrim for the Thanksgiving play. Mitsurugi had found a brown homespun dress that looked like a reasonable fit for Talim, and a cloak for himself. Talim took the dress from him and disappeared into a back room to change.

I'd noticed that Mitsurugi had been sort of watching out for Talim, almost like he were her father or uncle. I wondered if he had a family of his own; if he was a parent as well as a warrior.

"Here is a cloak for you," Xianghua said, holding a dark green bundle out to me. I put it on over my camos. Mitsurugi looked a little silly with a hooded cloak over Samurai armor, but from more than fifty or so yards off, he'd seem more like just another middle European peasant. So would Xianghua. So would I—the camo pattern on my trousers would look like a solid color at a distance.

It wasn't the greatest protective coloration in the world, but it might be enough to save our lives.

Talim emerged from the back room. "Such strange clothes," she said, "but at least they are warm."

"Let's go see if Raphael has found anything," Mitsurugi said.

We stepped out into the street. Raphael was nowhere to be seen. I went over to the bakery, looking for him, but he wasn't in there, either. That made me nervous. "Raphael!" I called. Mitsurugi and Xianghua repeated the shout.

We heard a single set of hoofbeats behind us. We spun around and saw Raphael riding up to us on a dark brown horse. He reined it to a stop in the middle of the street. "Greetings," he said jauntily. "There was no food in there, or at least none fit to eat, so I decided to look a little further, when what should I see but this magnificent fellow."

"Where did he come from?" Xianghua asked.

"He's a few small flesh wounds, and this appears to be a military saddle, so my guess would be that his previous rider fell in battle nearby." Raphael got down off the horse, still holding the reins. "We are no closer to finding food, but at least not all of us will have to walk." He looked at me. "Now, Seamus, watch quietly and you might learn something." He pointed at the horse. "You see this? This is a horse. This is the front of the horse, and this is the . . . rear of the horse. In order to ride the animal, you climb on top and face in this direction. You could face the other direction, I suppose, but it would make it difficult to see where you are going, though you would at least know where you had been—"

Xianghua giggled; Mitsurugi suppressed a laugh. "Okay, okay," I said, "you've had your fun."

"I see you've been busy yourselves," Raphael said. "Miss Talim, that dress looks quite becoming on you." Talim smiled self-consciously.

"See anything interesting?" I asked. "Other than the horse, that is."

"I didn't go far," he said, "no more than fifty paces before I saw him. There seems to be no one else on the streets, and whoever sacked this town was quite thorough about it. I saw—"

"Something's coming!" Talim said.

We listened for a moment. It sounded like men marching in step. The brown horse neighed. "Let's get out of the street," I said.

We ducked into a nearby alley. About twenty or so feet down, it intersected another alley. We were able to get into a position from which we could peer around a corner and keep the street under observation.

After a few minutes, a troop of men with pikes passed down the road between the town and its church, traveling the same direction as the cavalry we'd seen earlier. There were lots of them; battalion strength, at least. They were followed by a battery of four iron cannons drawn by horse teams, and a convoy of wagons. There were civilians in some of the wagons—captives? hostages? camp followers? refugees?

When the last wagon had passed, we cautiously came out of the alley and went down the street to the edge of town. The tail end of the convoy was on the distant rise. We watched them disappear over the hill. I was standing next to Talim, a little behind the other three.

"Who are they," Mitsurugi asked, "and where are they marching?"

I heard what might have been a footstep behind me, and then a hand touched my shoulder.

I whirled around. Talim squealed in surprise and drew her weapons.

He was a balding man in his forties, with a dark, pointed beard. His clothes were all black. His hands were empty.

I heard swords being drawn behind me.

"God be praised," the man said, "you have come at last!"

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	5. Chapter 5

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 5 – The Mission 

The guy seemed harmless enough—if he'd wanted to do me in, I'd already have been showing St. Peter my passport—but Raphael, at least, wasn't taking any chances. He pushed forward between Talim and me, his blade drawn and pointed at the man's throat. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced," he said.

"I am Father Johannes Sarkander; I'm the parish priest here," he replied evenly. It was only as he said this that I noticed the Roman collar peeking out from under his cape. "I can understand your fears, Raphael, but there is no need for your sword to be drawn."

"How do you know my name?" Raphael asked.

"I know all of your names: Talim, Xianghua, Mitsurugi, Seamus. Now come quickly, we have much to do and little time in which to do it."

Fr. Johannes turned on his heel and strode off up the street with a purpose. Any one of the five of us could have shot him or stuck him from behind, but the possibility didn't seem to bother him. I looked at my companions; they all had that _what-do-we-do-now-boss?_ sort of expression on their faces. "I think we're supposed to go with him," I said, and I jogged a little to catch up "Ah, excuse me, Father," I said to him. "Do you mind if I ask a few questions?"

"I'm sure you have many questions. I will answer as I am able."

The others were following me, Raphael leading the horse by the reins. "Let's start with, ah—where in blue blazes are we?"

"You are in the town of Hollenschau, in Silesia."

"Silesia," I said, trying to visualize a map of Europe from sixteen hundred something, "you mean, like, ah, Silesia as in somewhere between Germany and Poland, that Silesia?"

"Yes. The Kingdom of Poland is north and east of here, Bohemia and the Palantines are to the west, Moravia and Austria to the south, the Magyars and Ottomans beyond there to the southeast; Silesia is a part of the domain of the Holy Roman Emperor."

"Oh." The Holy Roman Empire: all I remembered about the Holy Roman Empire was that it wasn't particularly holy or Roman. "Where did everybody go?"

Fr. Johannes told his story in an animated voice, with a lot of gesturing. "These are the lands of Baron von Labkowitz, who is loyal to the Emperor. Bitkowsky von Bystritz threw in his lot with the Bohemian rebels, and they sent a regiment to occupy the town and levy a war tax. Baron von Labkowitz and most of the people fled north with whatever they could carry. The Bohemians began to sack the town, but then Gabor's Magyar cavalry attacked from the south and drove them out—and _they_ began sacking the town. The Bohemians returned with cannon yesterday, drove off Gabor, sacked the town a third time, and now they are marching east to attack the Poles."

"So terrible," Talim said sadly.

"Oh, dear Talim, you do not know the truth you speak! Armies marching to and fro, war and death and sacking and burning, all the common evil that men do to one another, were that all we suffered, it would be terrible enough, but—" He stopped abruptly and turned to face us. "There is a greater evil at work here. Von Bystritz has always been an enemy to the Church and the people of these lands, but lately . . . his cruelty is much greater, he has crossed boundaries that even the most wicked of rulers dared not cross before. I sense . . . I sense that he no longer acts out of his own greed and malice, but as an instrument of another whose evil is greater than his." He paused, looking at each of us for a moment. "And that, that is why you were summoned."

"I think I get it here, Father," I said. "We're supposed to take out this von Bista-er, von Bister-bis-bus-whatever, right?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "You couldn't possibly; there aren't enough of you. No, no, your purpose is quite different, and far nobler than assassination." He turned back around and strode down the street.

There was nothing for it but to keep following him.

After about another five minutes of brisk walking through the streets of Hollenschau, he led us down an alley. About halfway to the end he stopped. "Nadeza!" he called, "They are here."

After a half a minute or so, a little nun dressed in black peered around the corner of a building at us. She was one of those ladies that might have been forty, or fifty, or maybe a well-preserved sixty or a weather-beaten thirty. "Father Jan!" she said happily. "I was beginning to worry."

"Your worry is misplaced, Sister Nadeza. Take us to the children."

Sister Nadeza led us into a stable, where there were six kids, three boys and three girls, the oldest about ten or eleven, and the youngest a toddler. The boys were named Citrad, Bedrich, and Georg; the girls were, Rickena, Dusana, and Zelenka. As the Sister explained, four of them were orphans who had been taken in by the town convent; the other two (Bedrich, age six or so, and little toddler Zelenka) had gotten separated from their family when the Bohemians attacked the first time.

"I do not pretend to know why," Father Jan said, "but whatever evil is about seems most interested in these children. You were summoned here to protect them and conduct them to safety."

"Define 'safety.'"

"The Baron and the Polish army are to the northeast of here, about 20 miles away. That is where most of the townspeople have fled; that would be the nearest safe place."

It sounded like a plan to me, but I didn't feel like I had standing to make the commitment on behalf of everybody. I looked at my companions. Talim seemed sympathetic. Mitsurugi looked noncommittal, but then again, he was the sort who always showed a poker face. Raphael looked out-and-out skeptical, and Xianghua, I couldn't tell what she was thinking. "Could we have a couple minutes to discuss things?" I asked. Father Jan nodded.

We stepped out into the alley. "Here's how I see this: we all agree we're here for some reason; and I think we just found what that reason was. What do you think?"

Raphael was the first to speak up. "This priest, he seems an honest man, but all of his talk of malevolent powers chasing small children—I fear the poor man has gone beyond the bounds of sanity."

"It might be," I replied, "but two and a half hours ago, you were in Paris and Mitsurugi here was in a village on Hokkaido, and I was somewhere down a spider-hole in Afghanistan, so this day's pretty insane already. Besides, it's not like we have anything better to do."

"Those children need our help," Talim said.

"We are warriors," Mitsurugi said, looking straight at Raphael, "and a warrior's duty is to defend the innocent."

Raphael shrugged. "I've always wanted to tour Silesia. This seems a good time to do it."

"Xianghua?" I asked.

She smiled that mischievous little smile of hers. "Someone has to keep you out of trouble, Seamus."

We went back into the stable. "Father Jan," I announced, "looks like you've got an escort."

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	6. Chapter 6

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 6 – Adventures in Land Navigation 

Due to the short time remaining before nightfall, and the threat of heavy weather, we decided to hole up in the stable until first light. Sister Nadeza and the older girls cooked some sort of stew. I'd had mystery meat like this before, as a guest of some Afghan tribal elders. In situations like that, you just eat it and try not to make faces when anyone's looking. It wasn't bad, actually, but it wasn't all that good, either.

The next morning, as soon as it was light, we loaded up. Raphael and Mitsurugi rigged up saddlebags full of provisions on the horse, which we would use to carry the smaller kids. Xianghua and Talim helped the kids get packed and bundled up.

I got some kid-sized blankets together, rolled them into a long cylinder, and slung it over my right shoulder, tying the ends together at my left hip with some twine. Once I had it adjusted so I could draw the .45 without difficulty, I went outside. Georg, Bedrich, and Dusana were on the horse. Little Zelenka was too small and unsteady to ride, so Sister Nadeza had rigged up a sort of papoose-backpack thing to carry her. Citrad and Rickena, the two older kids, who were about ten or eleven, had light bundles slung over their shoulders, as did Talim, Raphael, and Mitsurugi. Xianghua was holding the horse's reins.

"Are we ready?" I asked.

"I think we are," Mitsurugi replied.

"Where's Father Jan?"

"He said he would be here shortly," Sister Nadeza said. She looked apprehensive.

Father came down the alley just as she said that. He had a rolled-up piece of heavy paper in one hand. "We are very fortunate," he said, "that the Bohemians and the Magyars did not put the town hall to the torch." He handed me the rolled-up paper. "This is a map of the Baron's lands."

I unrolled it. The paper was really thick, more like an animal skin than an actual piece of paper. It was hand-drawn, with towns and hills and woods and bridges represented by little cartoons rather than map symbols. There were Latin inscriptions running around the borders of the page, and town and location names in elaborate calligraphy. It was less of a map than a work of art, and I would love to have something like it framed and displayed in my living room someday when I get a living room.

As a navigational aid, however, it was not what I was used to working with. "Is the top of the map north?" I asked. There was no compass rose.

"I believe it is," Father Jan replied.

"Well, let's hope you're right, or we might end up in Vienna." I laid it on the ground, took out my compass, and oriented it, talking to myself as I did it. "Okay, if this edge of the map is north-south, and the compass says this is magnetic north, so then, the magnetic deviation is . . . I have no idea, so let's hope it's not much."

I looked up. They were staring at me in complete confusion. "What are you doing?" Xianghua asked tentatively.

"I'm orienting the map," I said, realizing that no one had the slightest idea what I was talking about. "Lining 'north' on the map up with north in real life so I can use my little old magnetic compass here to keep us pointed the right way." Only Raphael seemed to get what I was saying. "Okay, Father, show me on the map here where we need to get."

He pointed to an area to the northeast—well, upper right, anyway—of Hollenschau. "The Baron is said to be here, with his retainers and the Poles."

I set the compass so that one edge was on the line we wanted to travel, just like I'd learned to do as a Tenderfoot Scout back in Troop 1705. "All righty, if we're _here_, and we want to go _there, _then our compass course is . . . zero three five, or something like it." I rolled the map up and put my compass away. "My thought is we cut across country, stay off the roads and try to stay under cover as much as we can."

"Why not follow the road?" Rickena asked. She was a bit of a tomboy, sort of the Silesian version of Xianghua.

I smiled at her. "Because, little princess, these days there's a lot of people on the road, and not all of them are friendlies, and we don't want the bad guys bothering you." I looked at the adults. "As a matter of policy, I suggest we avoid contact with anyone, especially groups of armed men, unless we know for sure they're friendly." I looked specifically at Father Jan and Sister Nadeza. "Can you guys tell by looking at flags or uniforms which army is who?"

"I will know the Baron's standard if I see it," Sister Nadeza answered. I could work with that. The modern Polish flag is just plain red and white, but at various times in history, I was pretty sure they'd used a red flag with a black or white two-headed eagle. Unless it looked Polish, or it passed the Sister Nadeza test, we'd presume it hostile, evade and break contact.

Aaaruggh—there I was, assuming command again! "What do you all think?" I asked, feeling lame. They all seemed to be going along with me, but still . . . .

Father Jan seemed to sense my emotion. "I think you are a good leader, Seamus, and you know what is best. Now, let me give you a blessing, and then you can proceed."

It was only then that I realized he wasn't planning to come with us. Sister Nadeza had a pained expression—she'd just figured it out, too. "What about you?" I asked him.

"I cannot go now. I have . . . other business to attend to here." He looked at the adults in a way that told us all that he expected never to see us again. It was in that moment I realized—it was one of those things again, don't ask me how I knew, I just did—that he was right.

"But you will come later?" Bedrich asked innocently.

"I will be with you, little one; do not worry." I noticed his word choice: _be with you,_ not _catch up to you._

"I could stay with you, . . . if you need some help." It was Raphael, which sort of surprised me; I didn't think he had it in him. Mitsurugi and Talim, too, looked ready to volunteer.

"No," Father Jan replied, "your place is with them—but thank you. Now, let us bow our heads and ask God's blessing . . . "

We were about half a mile out from Hollenschau, nearing the place where plowed fields gave way to woods. I was the tail end of the column, and I looked back at the town one last time. I was starting to get the creepin' willies, like I did right before the time the Taliban mortared our camp a couple weeks ago. I didn't want to let the kids see my nervousness—after all, if I'm wrong, I'd be worrying them for nothing, and if I'm right we'll deal with it when the time comes.

I turned around. "Hey, Raphael," I called out, "you ever come up with a name for that horse?"

"Well," he said, "no, it never occurred to me that I should give him a name."

"Do _you_ want to name him?" Xianghua asked me.

"All right," I said, trying frantically to think of a good horse name. I went with the first thing that came to mind. "How about . . . ah . . . 'Mister Ed?'"

I know, Mister Ed was white, and this horse was brown—but they didn't know that.

"That's a _funny_ horse name!" Bedrich declared.

"Oh," I said, "where I come from, Mister Ed is a very famous horse. Why, when I was you age, we used to"—_Crikey!_ How do you explain television to people who don't have electricity?—"ah, listen to . . . listen to the . . . the village storyteller"—hey, don't laugh, it's as good a description as anything you could come up with—"telling tales of the famous Mister Ed, the talking horse."

The kids giggled. "Horses don't talk," Dusana scolded.

"Oh, this one did, or, so the story went, anyway. He would talk like—ah, let me see if I can remember—like this: 'Wilbur! What are all these children doing on my back?'"

When the laughter started to die down, Raphael looked at me quite seriously. "So, now you are telling me that, in this fantastic land where you come from, you do not ride horses, but"—he snickered—"you do talk to them."

He was setting me up for something, I just knew it. "Don't you talk to horses, too?"

"Well, yes, but"—another snicker—"in your land, the horses"—_snicker—_" the horses talk back!"

They were all laughing at me now. "Oh, come on! It was just a story."

Little Zelenka pointed at me from her perch on Sister Nadeza's back. "Funny!" she squealed.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	7. Chapter 7

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 7 – Night Reconaissance 

Silesia, near the Moravian border, is pretty country, with forested hills sloping down from the divide between the Danube and Oder river watersheds. If you ever feel like taking an extended backpacking tour of the area, I have some advice for you. Go in the summer. Don't go in March. In March, the weather is cold, with a lot of rain and mud and occasional snow, which makes for tough going—especially if, like us, you cut across country instead of following roads or trails.

Another recommendation: take a really good map and a decent GPS unit so you don't get lost.

I didn't have a GPS, of course, and I didn't have a good map. The map I had was accurate only in a very generalized sense; seventeenth-century folk cartography was casual about things like scale and spatial relationships and terrain contours. We were never lost, exactly, but if we were out of sight of a major landmark like a bridge or village, I had only the vaguest idea where I was, and no way to plot an easy route through the terrain.

We bedded down for the night in a sheltered spot on the west side of a lightly-wooded ridge. On the east slope, the woods gave way to a broad valley of open pastureland. There was a town about a mile and a half away, with a road running through it parallel to the watercourse, which may or may not have been the same village depicted on the map in our approximate position. The town looked deserted, but I didn't want to take a chance that it was occupied by hostiles—or that the hostiles would come trucking along the road at some point—so we were giving it a wide berth. I wanted to stay on the reverse slope from the town so we could have a campfire without it being seen from the town or the road.

Mitsurugi built a fire, and we ate some dinner—more of that mystery-meat substance in a form approximating beef jerky, and some dark bread. Raphael fed Mr. Ed and did whatever scheduled maintenance you do on horses; then he and Mitsurugi did a little practice swordfighting. Zelenka was crabby, she'd been cooped up on Sister Nadeza's back all day, and Talim was trying to settle her in for the night.

By now it was getting dark. I wanted to go eyeball the town again, to see if it was occupied. Call me paranoid if you like, but when you're in a war zone, it always pays to be a little wary. The reason they call it 'war' is because someone's out to get you. "Anyone want to come with me?" I asked the adults.

"I'll go with you," said Xianghua. She'd been running through a sequence of martial arts moves, with a couple of the kids watching her.

If you have to make a dismounted reconnaissance of a wooded slope in the middle of Silesia on a damp March evening, you could do worse than to have someone with you who knows how to handle a sword. It didn't hurt that she was pretty and hand an attitude. "You're hired."

We started picking our way up to the crest of the hill. "It's so dark," Xianghua complained, "so hard to see where you are going."

"Don't keep looking back at the campfire," I said. "Your eyes will dark-adapt faster if you avoid looking at bright lights."

She giggled softly. "That is like you, Seamus," she mused. "You are always—so serious, like the master who taught me the art of the sword."

We were almost to the top of the hill. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"No, it's not, not really." There was something in her tone of voice I wasn't quite understanding. Was she teasing me again, or trying to tell me something? Had I offended her? Did she still like me?—

_Dumb dumb dumb dumb DUMB! _Here I was, acting like I was thirteen and trying to get a date for the church festival. That kind of distractedness is _not_ good for one's life expectancy when on a dismounted reconnaissance in bandit country. I wanted to yell at myself: _Pay! Attention! To! The! Mission! Soldier!—and maybe that way you can _survive_ long enough to ask Xianghua_ _out afterward._

We made our way over the crest and down the other side. The slope was steep in places, and we took our time descending; there was no sense taking a tumble and hurting ourselves. We were also as quiet as we could be. Seventeenth century armies weren't exactly known for their skill at stealthy night operations, so the risk of meeting a patrol was fairly low—but every step was still taking us closer to the bad guys.

Suddenly, Xianghua stopped. "I hear something," she whispered.

I heard it, too. Something behind us, stumbling through the forest. I whirled around and pointed the .45 in the direction of the sound. I heard Xianghua's blade being drawn. She pressed against my back, sword at the ready.

A dark shape moved against the trees. It didn't seem tall enough to be a man. I held my fire.

The clouds in front of the moon thinned out, and the ambient light got a little brighter. I could see our visitor more clearly now. He had four legs and antlers. It was a deer, or an elk, or whatever other large undomesticated herd animal they have in Silesia.

I relaxed and started to put my gun away. "Can it hurt us?" Xianghua asked. Guess they don't have deer or elk in her part of China.

"No," I whispered back. "Just hold still a minute and he'll move on."

I felt something warm and wet on my cheek. It was only then that I realized that Xianghua had her left arm wrapped around my waist. I looked at her. She had that mischievous smile. "Did you just kiss me?"

She did it again, on the lips this time, then let go of me. "We have to be going," she said. She released her grip and began working her way downhill again, leaving me standing there feeling like I was thirteen again.

I got my mind back on business and caught up to her. After probably another ten minutes of trudging, we reached the edge of the woods. We were pretty far down the slope, so we didn't have quite the commanding view of the town that I'd had earlier in the day from the crest. Still, there was no mistaking what I saw. The buildings were dark, but there were a dozen or more fires ringing the town.

A military unit was encamped there. Probably not friendlies.

We watched the fires burning for a while. We could hear occasional noises from the camp—a shout or two, a horse whinnying—but the rest of the countryside was silent. Probably cav, but they didn't seem to be out patrolling—thank God for small favors.

I turned to Xianghua. "Let's head back," I whispered.

In the pale, cloud-filtered moonlight, I saw her eyes go wide. "Seamus!" she whispered loudly, a note of fear in her voice.

I looked back at the town. There was a bright purple-orange light source in among the buildings. Bright enough that you could see detail on the things the light shone on. Way too bright and steady to be a fire, and the wrong color besides. Just looking at it gave me the creepin' willies—the major, big-time, get-me-out-of-here, I-want-my-mommy kind of creepin' willies.

I remembered what Father Jan had said. About how the local bad-guy had gotten worse recently: _I sense that he no longer acts out of his own greed and malice, but as an instrument of another whose evil is greater than his._

Whatever that light was, it for sure _looked_ evil enough. Like the Devil Himself, or at least someone on his senior management team.

If I were back in Afghanistan, I could get on the radio to our artillery, or have the wing-wiper call in some tac air, and make it go away. Would've been nice to have that capability now.

"What is that?" Xianghua asked, sounding like she was afraid I might know the answer.

"I don't know," I whispered back, "but I think it means we need to get out of here."

We double-timed our way back to where the others were encamped. Raphael and Mitsurugi were sitting up by the fire, keeping watch while the others slept on the ground in a loose circle of blankets. "What is it?" Raphael asked.

"There's a good-sized mounted unit encamped over in that town," I said, "and they don't look like they're on our side." I didn't want to go into detail about the weird glowing purple-orange light, at least not in front of the kids, so I left it at that. "If they send mounted patrols out at first light, they'll be right on top of us. We need to beat feet right now. Get the kids loaded up,"—three or four of them were already gathered around, drawn by the commotion—"douse the fire, crank up the horse, and we're out of here."

We spent all night moving along the ridge, staying on the reverse slope from the town. That took us about ten degrees north of our base course for an unknown distance. At first light, we found ourselves emerging from the woods into open pasture. The ridge faded out about three or four hundred yards north of our position. There was a moderate fog which kept visibility down to around five hundred yards.

I looked at my companions. The adults, the kids, even Mister Ed, all looked like they were ready to wilt—except Zelenka, who was sound asleep in the carrier on Talim's back. "Let's rest up here a bit," I said. "Raphael, how about you and me go up on the ridge and get a better idea where we are."

We crept cautiously up to the crest. The hill fell away steeply on the other side, and the fog was a bit denser there. There seemed to be a stream, or at least a gully, to the northeast, at the limit of our vision. Most likely, there was an up-slope on the other side of it. I didn't like the idea of crossing open country in broad daylight, but we could probably get over that stream and onto the opposite slope well before the fog burned off.

I was about ready to start back down when we heard hoofbeats. About a dozen mounted men emerged from the fog. They spotted us, and turned to ride at us, sabers drawn.

Hostiles, no question about it.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	8. Chapter 8

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 8 – Meeting Engagement 

Raphael and I bounded down the hill. "Cavalry!" I shouted, "Cavalry coming this way!"

When we reached the bottom of the hill, Mitsurugi, Xianghua, and Talim had their weapons drawn. Sister Nadeza was taking Zilenka out of the papoose-thing on Talim's back. "Kids, down off the horse," I directed. "Talim, you stay with them."

"They are coming," Mitsurugi announced.

I whirled around. The cavalry had stopped at the crest; with a shout from the officer leading the detachment, they drew sabers and started down the hill, spread out in a single line, at a trot. They were maybe a hundred yards off.

Raphael and I got directly between the kids and the approaching cav. I gestured to Mitsurugi and Xianghua; they positioned themselves on either flank, a little further out, forming a classic lazy-W defense. Mitsurugi was on the left flank, his sword out in front of him in a two-hand hold. Xianghua, on the right, stood with her arms slightly out to her sides, sword point down, almost like she didn't quite know what to do. Was she losing her nerve? I wanted to do something to protect her, but there was no time.

Raphael had his musket at the ready; I had the .45 out with the safety off. "We're gonna hold fire until they're about thirty or forty yards out. I wanna make it count."

"I understand," he said.

"On my command."

At sixty yards off, they increased their pace.

"Ready!" I raised the .45 in a two-hand hold. The cavalry was fifty yards away.

Forty-five yards. "Aim!" I pointed the gun at a trooper who was heading directly for me, and got a good sight picture.

The next two minutes were an eternity:

_Forty yards now. I aim for the center of mass._

_Thirty-five yards. "Fire!" I squeeze two shots off; "double tap," just like they teach you on the firing range at Fort Bragg. The trooper I'm aiming at seems to slump in the saddle. I hear a soft pop as Rapahael's musket discharges, and a fraction of a second later, a horse shrieks and rears._

_I adjust my aim to the left, pick up another trooper, fire two more. My target falls backwards out of the saddle._

_Aim to the right, pick up another target, two more shots, did I miss? He's at an off-angle, lead him a little more, another shot, the horse stumbles._

_One of the cavalrymen is almost on top of Xianghua. I fire one round at him—miss!—and the slide locks open. I back up a pace or two—Raphael has his sword out, and I want to give him room to work—eject the empty magazine, and reload._

_Xianghua just stands there looking timid until the man coming at her is right on top of her, his saber beginning to swing forward. She makes this move, like a dancer's spin, twirls out and away from him. She's so quick, he can't correct his aim. The saber cuts through thin air a foot away from her. As that happens, Xianghua does this sort of jump-flip and speeds up her rotation, and suddenly her sword is coming around behind the rider in a furious arc. She lands her blow square in the middle of his lower back. He groans and pulls back on the reins reflexively before he falls out of the saddle. The horse slows and sort of stops in the middle of the melee, not sure what to do with itself._

_That move, it was mesmerizing. Pretty, even, like classical ballet._

_I'd love to watch more, but people are trying to kill me. I glance to my left as I ram a fresh magazine in and thumb the slide-lock out of engagement; Raphael is fencing with the officer, holding his own despite the disadvantage of being dismounted; Mitsurugi is doing a fair imitation of a tornado, whirling around and keeping three of the bad guys tied up; two other hostiles are down. Left flank seems to be under control._

_Two bad guys still live on the right. One is working around the outside, using a riderless horse as a screen, to come around at Xianghua; the other is angling toward Talim and the kids. Xianghua can take care of herself. I start to engage the one threatening Talim. He's holding a pistol instead of a saber; he sees me, reins the horse to a stop, and fires._

_It hits me square in the chest._

_I'm wearing a Kevlar vest with ceramic plate inserts, standard issue for those of us in the 1/93rd Infantry. It's designed to stop a modern 5.56 or 7.62 round at fifty yards, and I can tell you from direct personal experience that it lives up to specification._

_Seventeenth-century ballistics are no match for twenty-first century materials science. I barely feel it. Must have a really low velocity, like a paintball round._

_I return fire. The other guy is not as well protected as me, and I have a better weapon. Down he goes._

_Behind me, I hear a horse scream._

_What happened to the guy coming at Xianghua? She's still standing, sword at the ready, but the bad guy is not there._

_I look around. Mitsurugi has just taken down another horse and rider. The bad guys have noticed all the casualties, and they're withdrawing. Four on horseback, one other, his horse shot out from under him, running after them; three riderless horses trailing behind in obedience to some primal herd instinct. _

_Engagement over. _Seven bad guys down, no friendly casualties. Everybody had fun, nobody got hurt. Good day at the office, as we say.

Mitsurugi even taunted the retreating enemy: "My name is Mitsurugi! Remember it!" Like I said before, he was one serious dude.

Xianghua was smiling. I understood the feeling. Winston Churchill once said that there was no thrill quite like getting shot at and missed, and he was right. Guess when it's a sword, and it misses you up close and personal like that, the effect is even greater.

Sister Nadeza and the kids were all right; a little scared, but undamaged. Talim had been between them and the nearest hostile, her blades at the ready, but fortunately she had not needed to use them.

Mister Ed appeared completely unbothered by the whole affair. Of course, he's a horse, and they don't usually get all that emotional.

If those guys we'd just held off were a rear-security patrol, they'd fall back on their base and report our position, and we'd have more of them in the area before too long. Worse yet, if they were outriders, providing flank security for a moving column, they and their friends could be back real soon. Either way, we needed to be somewhere else and right quick.

I retrieved my empty magazine and reloaded. We packed up the kids and resumed the march. A few hundred yards further on, we crossed a small stream. Beyond that, the land began sloping up again. We got partway up the hill, and then turned to follow along the slope, which put us back on a roughly northwest course like we wanted to be—after deviating north from our base course for an unknown distance.

It was another mostly cloudy day, and the fog was slow to lift. Eventually, I could see enough landmarks to narrow it down to one of two small valleys. Both ran in the direction we wanted to go, ascending toward what looked like high passes through the Danube-Oder divide. Either one would get us where I wanted to go.

By mid-afternoon, the weather was beginning to look really ugly. Solid overcast, with a front of dark clouds moving east up the valley toward us. The wind cold and gusting. It looked like we were in for some serious thunderstorms. I started looking around for someplace we could shelter, in case the weather got worse.

As we neared the top of the pass, I could see what looked like a large gray outcropping of rock above it on one side. "Look, Sister!" Citrad exclaimed, pointing. "The Tower of the Wolf!"

"Tower?" I said. It may have looked like a rock outcropping at first glance, but once you studied it closely enough, you realized it wasn't a natural feature, but something artificial.

"It is an old castle," Sister Nadeza explained. "It is said to have been built by the Emperor Charlemange, to hold the pass against the Magyars, but it has not been used for many hundreds of years."

If I was remembering Western Civ correctly, Charlemange was crowned emperor in about the year 800 or so. "We can hole up there until the storm passes. Does it still have a roof?"

"I do not know."

"We cannot go there," Georg protested, "it is haunted."

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Rickena admonished him, maybe a tad too sharply.

"Those are just old peasant tales," Sister Nadeza said. "God will watch over us even if they are true."

Georg was still looking apprehensive. "If there's any ghosts there," I suggested, "they'd be the ghosts of men who guarded the pass long ago, right?" Georg nodded, ever so slightly.

"Yes," Sister Nadeza said, deftly catching my drift. "Those men protected our people. Their ghosts would mean us no harm." That seemed to satisfy him, and we continued on our way.

Of course, it wasn't long before we had something new to worry about.

Talim saw it first; cavalry, thirty plus, coming up the valley after us, almost like the storm was driving them our way. We might make it to the castle ahead of them, if we hustled, but just barely.

Too bad the castle wasn't garrisoned by ghosts after all. We could use the help.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	9. Chapter 9

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 9 – The Tower of the Wolf 

There was once a road from the floor of the pass up to the Tower of the Wolf. It was overgrown with brush and weeds, and suffering from deferred maintenance, but we could still use it. The tower was a small keep, originally about three or four stories tall, but partially collapsed, and about fifty feet in diameter, with a courtyard that was enclosed by a wall maybe thirty feet high. The hillside it sat on was extremely steep. The courtyard was between the tower and the slope of the mountain, and the road ran uphill along the wall to a gate on the hill side of the enclosure.

Clever design, that. An attacker could try to scale the tower on the downhill side, but only if he has six-story scaling ladders. If he decides to go around to the back to try and force the gate, he parades past three sides of the outer wall on his way there, with people dropping arrows and boiling oil on him the whole way, and then there's not enough space between the hill and the gate to get a really good start with the battering ram. With a half-decent garrison, it's near impregnable for any army not equipped with howitzers or A-10s.

Behind us, the cavalry and the thunderstorm rolled up the valley together. The storm clouds had that nasty look they get in tornado weather. The gloom made the approaching cavalry look pretty menacing in its own right.

Well, at least they didn't have howitzers or A-10s. Too bad we didn't have a garrison—or an A-10 of our own.

The gate was weakened by age, but still enough on its hinges that we could sort of close it behind us. The bad guys could open it right back up, but they'd have to dismount to do it.

The courtyard was maybe thirty yards square. It had once had some wooden buildings in it along the walls, but they'd long ago collapsed. The door to the keep still worked. It wouldn't slow the bad guys down for long, but every little bit helps.

The keep had a heavy wood door which was partially rotted, but still swung on its hinges, and could be blocked from the inside with some scrap timber. Inside, there was a single chamber with a high ceiling. There was a narrow slit in the wall to either side of the entrance so archers could harass anyone trying to force the door. Along the back wall, there was a stone stairway leading up to the second floor. It was full of junk; old piles of wood and what might have once been rags. Upstairs was more of the same; lucky for us the floor was still sound when I walked across it. There was another open chamber, and on the other side, a short ladder and an opening leading to the parapet. The fourth floor had collapsed in on the third, so this was as high as you could go.

I went out on the parapet and looked down the valley. The bad guys were three or four minutes out. That was all the time we had to get ready.

The plan, as plans go, was pretty simple. The cavalry wouldn't have scaling ladders, and I doubted that too many of them were handy enough with a rope to rock-climb the walls. That meant they were coming through the gate, and that let us take advantage of the fact that this place was designed to defend against an assault on the gate. Raphael and I were going up on the wall, on the side they'd have to pass to get to the gate, since we had all the firearms. When the cav came up the road, he and I would potshot them from the walls for as long as it was worthwhile to do so, then retire into the keep. Sister Nadeza and the kids were on the second floor, out of the way, so the first floor was a free-fire zone. Raphael, Xianghua, and Mitsurugi up front, engaging the hostiles with swords once they forced the door. Me and the .45, we were the second layer. Talim, at the base of the steps, was the reserve, ready to stop the ones that get through the first two layers.

I had no illusions about this; someone's going to get through, and there's going to be friendly casualties. There's too may of them and not enough of us.

We crouched behind the parapet. It got darker and darker, like deep twilight. The sky was positively nasty. Solid overcast, and I'd swear the clouds were olive green. Not gray; _green_.

Over the noise of the wind, I heard the sound of horses. I looked over the wall. The bad guys were maybe fifty yards off, moving deliberately up the old road to the castle.

"Get ready," I told Raphael. "Open fire at thirty yards." He nodded.

I was hiding behind one of the crenellations in the castle wall, the .45 at the ready. I had a full magazine, with an extra round in the chamber. "They are close," Raphael said.

I sneaked a peek around the edge of the stonework. They were just about there:

"Let's roll!"

_I'm around the corner and aiming at the center of a mass of guys on horseback. It's so gloomy now I can't see individual targets, and I really don't need to. Just aim for the center; I'll hit something._

_I let off eight rounds, fast as I can without throwing off my aim. Raphael gets off a shot with the musket and he ducks back behind the wall reloading. Soon as the slide locks I'm back behind the wall myself. I hear shouts, screams, horses in pain._

_I slap in another magazine, move over one space and come back up. The cav has recovered from the surprise, and they're double-timing it up to the gate. A couple of them return fire with pistols. I get off another four or five shots, and Raphael gets in another round of his own, before the range is longer than I like._

_So far, we're doing good. There's some dark shapes lying on the road, and a riderless horse milling around._

_I can hear them working on the main gate now. There's no parapet on the inner face of the wall, and I don't want to be out here with no cover, so I signal Raphael to get inside and downstairs._

_A moment later, I'm inside. Raphael's got the musket slung and he's halfway down the steps. Citrad is in the middle of the room, with a piece of timber in his hands, nervously watching the stairway. Give the kid credit, he's got the right instincts._

_I look back to see if I'm being followed. _Great._ I hadn't thought about the hostiles coming in along the wall until now, and I don't have anyone I can assign to flank security except an eleven-year old kid with a two-by-four. "Over here," I called to him. "Watch this way; if you see bad guys coming along the wall, you yell _real loud_."_

_He nods. To the steps I go; I do a tactical reload on the way downstairs, swapping out my partially-loaded magazine for a full one. Counting the one in the chamber, I'm back to eight rounds._

_The bad guys are banging on the main door with some sort of battering ram. Mitsurugi and Xianghua are back from the door about ten feet, swords ready. Raphael is looking out the right-hand firing slit with the musket ready. The bad guys back off for another run and he shoots. He starts to reload, but before he gets very far he suddenly spins back away from the slit, back up against the wall. A second later, someone fires a pistol in through the slot._

"_Stay clear," I tell him. The door is splintering; they'll be through on the next try. Raphael puts the musket down and draws his rapier. I move a little to the right, off-axis from the doorway. Xianghua sees where I am, moves left herself to clear the field of fire._

_Here they come again._

_The door finally gives out, and a large, timeworn timber surges into the room, carried by a team of six men. They weren't expecting it to give quite so soon, so they're off balance as they come in, and the lead guy on the near side trips on some debris._

_I've got as good a sight picture as I'm going to get. I put two rounds into the middle guy on the near side. Raphael swings his rapier around and cuts the legs out from under the third one; just as quick, he's out and around in a fighting stance, ready for whoever is coming behind the battering ram guys._

_Xianghua gives the lead guy on the far side a flying kick to the upper body, tumbling him back onto the timber, then follows up with her sword._

_Mitsurugi brings his _katana_ around in a swirl and takes the other two guys on that side down._

_There's a whole squad coming in behind the battering ram, and I send the other six rounds out the door at them. Two or three go down; it's hard to tell in all the confusion. Slide-lock; time to reload. Sure hope I grabbed a full magazine, and not the one that's only partly filled._

_Xianghua is engaging the last of the battering ram guys, and Mitsurugi and Raphael are jamming the rest up in the doorway._

"_Seamus!" I hear Citrad yell from upstairs. "There are men on the wall!"_

_Time to commit the reserves. I look over at Talim. "Get upstairs; I'm right behind you."_

_Talim takes the steps two at a time, whipping out her blades as she goes. I slap in a fresh magazine and thumb the release; the slide returns to battery. _

_I reach the top of the steps, and Talim has the first bad guy engaged. He's got a cavalry saber, and he's expecting a European-style swordfight; Talim is showing him something completely different. She double-punches at him from just beyond arm's reach, flipping her blades at him at the end of each stroke. The first one is in the guy's face; it misses, but he flinches and gives her an opening, and she steps in and around the sword and nails him square in the chest with the second blade. She's better than I thought._

_Second bad guy is coming at Citrad, who's backed away from the door, trying to ward the baddie off with his two-by-four. I bring the .45 up and engage him; two shots; he's down._

_Another one has jumped in at Talim. She swings one leg around in a flying side kick that knocks him into the wall, then finishes him with a vicious slash from one of her blades._

_Next bad guy is at the door; I get off a couple of rounds and he falls back and away._

_I see movement at the door. Another shot; don't know if I hit or not._

_Someone fires a pistol into the room. I hear Talim squeal, and she collapses._

_The next guy jumps in, and he's huge. Taller than me, with a wild shock of blonde hair and the body of an NFL linebacker, he's obviously the leader of the detachment. He's wearing some sort of armor that doesn't look quite right for the Thirty Years War. In his left hand is the pistol he shot Talim with; in his right, what ought to be a two-handed sword, but he's using it one-handed and making it look easy._

_He takes a step toward Citrad and the other kids, then looks back at Talim and starts to raise his sword like he's going to finish her off. "Hey, loser!" I yell. He decides to come straight at me._

_I shoot him. Twice. _

_He's not slowing down. I don't know if the armor stopped the rounds, or if he's just really determined to chop me in half._

_Another shot, another hit, and he's still not slowing down; he's close enough I almost couldn't miss if I wanted to. That sword of his is swinging over his head and down toward mine._

_I put the last round into him and dodge to the side. The sword misses my left arm by a good inch or so._

_He knocks me sideways with his shoulder and lunges to the top of the steps, then collapses and tumbles down._

_Reload, back to the doorway. There's a bad guy looking in; he sees me sighting in on him and he ducks away._

I darted over to where I could see out the door. The bad guy was in retreat, bailing off the wall as fast as he could. All I could hear was a couple of the little kids crying. Couldn't blame them for that.

I went over to the steps; Xianghua was standing over the big blond guy, pointing her sword at his neck in case he had any ideas about getting up. It was pretty obvious, though, that he wouldn't be getting up again, ever.

"You guys okay down there?" I asked. Xianghua nodded. She looked unhurt, which was a relief.

"They have retreated," Mitsurugi called to me.

I turned around and went to check on Talim. She was sitting on the floor, clutching at her left arm, which was bleeding, and trying not to cry. Citrad was standing over her, wanting to do something.

I knelt down beside her. The pistol shot had ripped a nice gash across her upper arm. It was ugly and probably hurt like hell, but there was no arterial bleeding and no fragments stuck in her that I could see. "You're gonna be fine, princess," I told her. I had some gauze patches in my first aid kit, but this wound was too big for those. "Get me a blanket or something," I directed Citrad.

He was back momentarily with one of the little kids' blankets. Wasn't exactly hospital-grade sterile, but it would have to do. I got out my knife and started cutting it into several patches about six inches square and a strip to tie around her arm. The kids were gathering around, worried about Talim and curious what was going on.

I fished the Neosporin out of my pocket first-aid kit. I wiped off the wound with a piece of the blanket and squirted some of the ointment on. I slapped one of the cloth patches over it and pressed down. "Here, one of you . . . Rickena,here, hold this on here. Put pressure on it . . . that's a girl, that's what stops the bleeding, keep pushing."

I stowed the ointment. "What is that?" Georg asked.

"It's . . . stuff that helps it heal faster." I wasn't quite up to explaining the germ theory of disease right then.

"It's soaking through," Rickena complained.

I handed her another piece of the blanket. "Here—no, don't pull the other one off, put this over it and keep pressing. Reinforce, don't replace." I got a strip of blanket long enough to go around Talim's arm twice. "Okay, now, you keep holding that there while I tie this on."

"So you are a physician also?" It was Raphael, standing somewhere behind me.

I tied the strip in a nice square not, just like I learned in Scouts. "No, this is just basic first aid. How you holding up, Talim?"

"It hurts," she complained.

"It's gonna," I said. "I think I can give you something for the pain here in a minute." I was pretty sure there were some Advils in the first aid kit somewhere. I looked her straight in the eyes. "By the way, you did good."

She looked over at the corpse of one of the guys she'd been fighting, then back at me. I knew what she was feeling; it was just what I'd felt after my first engagement. It's a complicated emotion, a mixture of guilt and relief and bravado and mourning, and count yourself blessed if you never have to experience it.

I looked back at Raphael. He was standing a couple of steps below the top, with Xianghua right behind him.

The next thing I knew, the room was awash in a bright purple-orange light, flooding in from the courtyard and from the room below. It was the same light I'd seen on my little reconnaissance the night before.

Whatever it was, it was coming in through the front door.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	10. Chapter 10

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 10 – It 

Whatever was making that light, I just knew it wasn't friendly. I left Talim there and bounded downstairs, the .45 at the ready. Mitsurugi was in the middle of the first floor room, his _katana_ drawn, staring at the door.

When I caught sight of the light source, I stopped, frozen in place by sheer astonishment. Raphael and Xianghua were right behind me; I heard Xianghua gasp.

"It" was a glowing orange ball about two or two and a half feet across. It was floating about waist high, in flagrant violation of the law of gravity, moving slowly across the courtyard in our direction.

It had an eye. A pupil and iris, right in the middle. Pointing straight at us.

_Definitely_ not friendly.

I jumped off near the base of the stairs, went down on one knee, and aimed at it.

It reached the door, and Mitsurugi backed away from it slowly, his blade in a guard position. Unfortunately, he backed right into my sightline, so I couldn't fire.

The ball-thing stopped in midair, three feet in from the doorframe.

Suddenly, there were all these—I don't know what you'd call them. Bones, body segments, Tinkertoys from hell, whatever they were, a cloud of them flew in from the courtyard. They looked like loose dinosaur fossils.

The stuff formed a swirling cloud around the ball-thing, then coalesced into a body of sorts. It had two legs, a kind of hip structure just below the ball, shoulders above it, and arms that ended in gnarled hands; a neck, but no head. The last few segments fused into a large sword in the thing's right hand. It was a nasty-looking sword made of a shiny black metal..

A headless monster with a giant eye in its belly and a giant black sword. If that doesn't give you the creepin' willies, there's something wrong with you.

Mitsurugi was the first to move. He took a swing at it with his _katana,_ the thing parried it and swung back, but he dodged. It brought its sword down in a smashing overhand arc, but Mitsurugi blocked and side-stepped. He hit the thing with a clean stoke that should have severed its left arm—but the _katana_ clanged like it had struck stone. The creature gave Mitsurugi a roundhouse kick that sent him flying across the room.

That gave me a clear shot. I fired twice. Both shots hit, one in the hip, one in the right shoulder. They bounced off, striking sparks as they hit.

The .45's slide locked in the open position. _I had put in the partially-used magazine._

It charged, swinging the sword at me from my left, about neck high. The thing was _fast. _I spent maybe half a second staring dumbly at my empty weapon before I realized what was happening. I ducked and rolled under the stroke and away from the creature. I heard the sword chop the air in half above me.

I was trying to get back on my feet, reload the .45, and reorient to the threat axis all at the same time, and not having a whole lot of success at any of it. The thing was standing almost on top of me, bringing the sword around for a vertical stroke. Xianghua jumped off the staircase and hit it with a flying kick which knocked it off balance. It managed to catch her ankle with its free hand and throw her away across the room.

She landed on her feet like a cat as the creature recovered and stood up. I was able to get back and away from the thing and get on with the business of reloading.

Xianghua drew her sword and rushed it, taking a stab at the eye. It dodged back and parried the stroke, then took a swipe back at her, forcing her to parry with her own blade. It drover her back several steps with furious sword strokes, then just as quickly backed away and started up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, Talim had gotten to her feet, and was standing with a blade in her right hand; her left arm dangled at her side.

Mitsurugi was back on his feet, and he chased after it. It stopped; the eye rotated so that it was looking at him through its back, and it attacked back down the stairs left-handed. The thing kicked Mitsurugi backward, and he tumbled over the body of the big blond guy. The thing's eye rotated back to its original orientation, and it marched back up the steps.

By this time, I'd sorted myself out and reloaded. If the thing got up to the top of the steps, among the kids—well, I didn't want to let that happen.

The thing had gone a step or two when Raphael charged up the steps with a yell and slammed into its "back." The creature spun its eye around again. Raphael had a pistol—he must have gotten it from one of the dead cavalrymen—and he jammed it right up against the thing's pupil and fired.

The sound it made, it sounded like a tortured soul shrieking from the depths of hell. I never want to hear that sound again.

The thing swatted at Raphael with its sword. It hit, and Raphael fell backwards off the step.

The creature staggered and stumbled. It tried to reverse direction again, but it lost its footing and fell off the steps. The fall would have broken an ordinary person's bones, but the creature got right back up. It was swinging its sword wildly, lashing out in random directions.

"It can't see!" Xianghua said

She went at it from one side, clanging her sword against it. The creature swung back at her, but inaccurately. She dodged, taunting it, deliberately making noise to keep its attention.

I slipped around to the other side, aimed right for the glowing eye-ball, and fired.

I emptied the magazine into it. With each shot, the thing let out that shriek again.

After the seventh round, the orange glow from the ball was noticeably dimmer. The thing staggered and fell. The glow went out and the ball, black now, collapsed into a pile of ash. The thing's body dissolved at the same time.

"I think we killed it." I said to no one in particular.

It was suddenly very quiet.

I looked out the door. The sky was clearing. Several cavalrymen were in the courtyard, watching the door. I walked out, trying my best to project some serious attitude. They saw me, noted the absence of the glowing eye thing, and started backing away toward the gate.

I came back in. Mitsurugi and Xianghua were standing over the fallen Raphael. The look on their faces told me everything I needed to know.

_. . . to be continued . . ._


	11. Chapter 11

**.45 Caliber Soul**

Chapter 11 – "You won't forget me, will you?" 

The Bohemian cavalry had vanished, leaving their dead behind. The storm front vanished, too, leaving a perfectly lovely day with bright blue skies and a scattering of cloud. You couldn't help the feeling that those events were directly related to the destruction of the glowing-eyeball thing

Unfortunately, victory had its cost. We couldn't dig a proper grave, so we buried Raphael in a cairn made out of loose stone in the middle of the tower's courtyard. Sister Nadeza led us in prayer; I followed with a short eulogy which ended as I came to attention and snapped off a farewell salute. Was his death here really a death, or did he find himself returned to his former place? There was no reason to believe that's what had happened, but you could always hope.

We re-loaded the kids and the baggage on Mister Ed and started down the east side of the pass. After a day's uneventful journey, we came upon an encamped army. We got close enough to make out the banners: some were solid red, with a white Polish eagle; others were in a green and black pattern whichSister Nadeza recognized as belonging to Baron von Labkowitz.

Mission accomplished.

Xianghua handed Mister Ed's reins to Sister Nadeza. "Aren't you coming, too?" asked Citrad.

Mitsurugi answered for us. "Our task is done. We must return to our homes." Another one of those things I knew without knowing how I knew it. I looked at Xianghua; she knew it, too.

After hugs from the kids and tears all around, Sister Nadeza and her charges set off to rejoin their people. We watched them from the edge of a small woods. "We're going home soon, too" Talim said wistfully. Her arm was better, but she'd be sore and stiff and wouldn't have full use of it for quite some time.

"You have the heart of a samurai, young girl," Mitsurugi said. He bowed to her, very deeply. "It has been an honor to fight with you."

I flashed her a smile. "Look me up in a few years, and I can probably get you a job in my outfit." I could imagine her working the fifty-cal on a Humvee; the Taliban wouldn't have a chance.

Xianghua gave her a bow, and then Talim said, "Farewell," and then there was that whatever-it-was-that-I-can't-describe . . . and Talim wasn't there any more.

I started to bow to Mitsurugi, but instead came to attention and saluted him. "A privilege serving with you."

"You are samurai too," he said, meeting my gaze. His eyes shifted to Xianghua. "And you, too, my lady."

Then he was gone.

I looked at Xianghua. She was on the verge of tears. "I can't come with you, can I?"

I knew the answer as well as she did. "Wish you could. Wish I could go with you." I meant it, too. She was exotic and pretty and tough in a fight and she had an attitude and she even liked me. I'd resign my commission and move to Imperial China for that; wouldn't you?

She stepped closer to me. She reached up and removed something from around her neck. It was a necklace of some kind, with an elaborate jade pendant the size of a half-dollar. She pressed it into my hand. "You won't forget me, will you?"

Not a chance!—but before I could tell her that, she gave me a big kiss and—

—I was on my hands and knees between two ammo crates in a spider hole beneath a farmhouse in the Panjashir Valley of Afghanistan. The red glowing thing I'd touched was gone.

"Lieutenant? El-tee?" It was Ruiz. "What you got there, man?"

"Nothing," I said because I couldn't think of anything better to say. "I thought I saw something; . . . must've just been a shadow."

"Oh, okay. Anyway, El-tee, over this way we got a whole crate of them little Russian nine-millimeter pocket pistols, and next to that . . ." Ruiz was rambling on, cataloging the contents of the spider hole, just like I'd never left. I wasn't really listening. It hit me: they were all dead. Not just Raphael, but all of them: Mitsurugi, Talim, Sister Nadeza, Father Jan. The kids, even little baby Zelenka, all dead hundreds of years ago.

". . . a half-dozen Saggers still in the packing crates . . ."

Xianghua. Her, too.

". . . AK-forty-sevens, and—hey, Eltee, there's one of them old bolt-action three-oh-threes, and it looks to be in good shape."

She just kissed me a moment ago, but she's been dead for hundreds of years. The kid that used to wait on me at the Happy Dragon on 21st Street in Terre Haute could be her octuple-great grandson for all I know.

A light shone in my face. "Hey, Eltee," Ruiz said, "you okay, man?"

How do I answer _that_ question? _Sorry, Private, I'm a little disoriented; I just got back from time travelling to Renaissance Europe._ Or how about: _Duuuuude, I just had, like, the coolest hallucination ever!_ "I'm okay," I sighed.

"You look like you just lost your best friend." Which was true, in a sense. Give the kid credit, he's perceptive.

"I'm just a bit worn out," I said as neutrally as I could. It was truthful, as far as it went, and it wouldn't give anyone grounds to refer me for a psych evaluation.

"It's been a long couple days out here in the boonies, that's for sure," Ruiz said. "'Least we'll be back at the base soon."

"Yeah." I needed to get my mind off Xianghua and Silesia. Doing my job might serve as a distraction. "How much stuff you figure is down here?"

"Man, I don't know." Ruiz thought about it for a second. "'Couple good-size truckloads, anyway."

"Okay, let's go back topside."

I met Sergeant Wheeler and Rawlins at the top of the ladder. "Nice sized cache down there," I said. "The Afghans"—I was referring to the friendlies, the army of the Karzai government and its allied tribes—"could use some of it, but it'd take us all night to hump it out."

"Blow it in place?" Wheeler asked. We didn't want to leave it for the bad guys, of course.

"Yeah, but first we'll copy down serial numbers and shipping labels off the crates; maybe Intel can figure out where this stuff comes from."

Wheeler looked at Rawlins. "Get a couple other guys, go down there and help Ruiz."

"Hey, Eltee," Ruiz called from down in the hole. "You ain't gonna leave this down here, are you?" He was holding up that old British .303 Lee-Enfield he'd found.

There's a very strict rule against taking war souvenirs. Nobody really enforces it. I sure wasn't in the mood to. "Dispose of it as you see fit, Private."

I went off in a corner of the room and sat. I didn't really need to do much beyond looking important; my guys know their stuff, and they don't need a whole lot of adult supervision.

It wasn't helping my mood any. I just kept seeing them all in my head, over and over again: the kids, Talim, Mitsurugi, Nadeza, Raphael, Xianghua.

Raphael had a daughter, or so he'd said; what happens to a kid stuck in the middle of the French Revolution when she loses her parents? Did they send kids that young to the gilloutine?

They didn't have antibiotics where Talim was going; did her wound get infected? Did she lose the use of her arm? Die from gangrene?

Citrad, Rickena, Bedrich, Georg, Dusana, and Zelenka —what was the childhood mortality rate in seventeenth-century Silesia? How many times in their lives would they be refugees again?

Was Mitsurugi destined to be one of the Martyrs of Nagasaki?

What happened to Xianghua?

By the time they had the charges all wired in, I was actually most of the way back to normal. We made our way to a flat spot a hundred yards upwind of the farmhouse. Sergeant Wheeler had the wires clipped to the detonator and the system armed and ready. The platoon was arranged in a tight perimeter around the LZ; the CIA guys and the prisoners had already flown out in a big old MH-47. Our ride home, a flight of four Blackhawks, was orbiting a couple of miles off. They'd come in and get us after the fireworks.

"Everybody take cover," Wheeler said. "There may be a lot of secondaries."

I had a sudden compulsion to run back to the farmhouse. That red thing had to still be down in the spider hole. Find it, touch it, I could go back. Xianghua would be there and . . .

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

Wheeler hit the detonator. The farmhouse disappeared in a volcano of flame. Nothing flew our way, but you could hear ammo cooking off in the bonfire for a good four or five minutes.

The choppers came and picked us up soon enough. Once we were up above small-arms range, you could feel the tension drop away. The guys started joking around, playfully bantering over the noise of the turbines and rotors. "Man, I can't wait to get back to base. A hot shower, a cold brew, and some Garth Brooks on the boom box."

"No way we listenin' to that cracker music!"

"What you wanna listen to?"

"Ja-Rule, 50 Cent, Jay-Z—"

"Oh, man, not that junk!"

"Hey, don't you go dissin' my music. Garth Brooks—dude, you ain't cool enough to dis me!"

"That's enough!" I said in my best exasperated-parent voice. "You two keep it up and the only music you'll get to listen to is _Barney's Sleepytime Songs._" We actually had a copy on the base; the Intel guys liked to play it for the Taliban between interrogations to soften them up.

"O-_kay_ El-_tee_, we'll be good. We promise"

"Hey, Johnson, how can you say I'm not cool?"

"You're from West Virginia."

"C'mon, man, West Virginia practically _invented_ cool . . ."

I looked out the side door. The eastern horizon was turning red; God had His hand on the dimmer switch, and He was getting ready to dial up sunrise. It looked like it was going to be a nice day. By that time, I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular; I guess I'd convinced myself that it all must have been an hallucination, or a vivid daydream. Probably from stress. We were due to rotate out at the end of the month; the R&R would do me good.

Ruiz was sitting on the bench next to me. The .303 Enfield was on the deck below his feet, wrapped in a blanket. He also had a Russian Makarov pistol stuffed into a pocket on his BDU; another souvenir for the collection. "'Scuse me, El-tee," he said. "You got any chewing gum?"

"Yeah, I think so." I reached into my pocket, pulled out the contents, found a fresh pack of gum and started unwrapping it.

"Jeeze Louise!" Ruiz all but shouted. "Where'd you get _that_?"

He was pointing to the intricate jade pendant in my hand. The one Xianghua had given me.

One of the other guys leaned over. "Man, that's a nice one!"

"Uh," I said, fumbling for something to say, "I got it from this girl I used to know."

"You got a girlfriend, El-tee?" Ruiz asked. I guess I nodded. "Maaaaaan, she must really like you."

"She did," I said absentmindedly. I put it back in my pocket. In that moment, I knew I'd see Xianghua again. Don't ask me how, I just knew it.

_The End_


	12. Author's notes and comments

**Author's Notes**

This story arose from an evening of playing _Soul Calibur II_ with my son P.J. on the Game Cube. P.J., playing Link, was kicking the snot out of me, and I began wishing aloud for a new character in the game, designed to my specifications . . . named "Sarge" . . . packing a .45 . . . BLAM! There, that oughtta fix that annoying elf boy!

The idea was, of course, too good not to run with.

I made no attempt to be canonical with respect to the _Soul Calibur_ storyline, but I did my best to be true to the SC characters I put into the story.

The first chapter is a bit of Tom Clancy wannabe pastiche that serves to get our hero Seamus sucked back in time.

Hollenschau is an actual place in Silesia; Fr. Jan Sarkander, the parish priest, is an historical figure; and the local political situation and troop movements are correct (in general terms, anyway) for March of 1620. I've never been to Silesia, so my apologies to Silesians everywhere if I've gotten the topography wrong.

The rest is a product of my fevered imagination. I'm not in the military and never have been, but I've done my best to get the military details correct, and to give my viewpoint character an authentic modern Armyworldview. There is no "1/93rd Infantry" in the U.S. Army at present--the unit designation, platoon call sign ("Beamer"), and go-code ("Let's Roll!") are my feeble tribute to some real-life heroes, the passengers of Flight 93.

You can probably guess which is my favorite SC battle setting.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think via the "review" section. Many thanks for the kind words to those who have already put in a review.


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